Episode 38
It had been so quiet that she almost woke Lark and Gran when she spoke, "You are all capable of such horrid savagery." The anger that clung to her words made the air grow hot and thick. I allowed her silence with her thoughts, and soon, the rage turned from boiling to bubbling. I checked in the rearview mirror to find Granny and Lark still resting peacefully. Finally, the heaviness around us eased, and I could take a deep breath. Lark, being the person he is, custom-made the back seats to fold into a futon-style bed. He tried to tell me it was so he could take the top off and look at the stars. Wonder how many times that line worked for him.
The empty landscape around us grew brown and then gray. Every so often, a dead tree or brush could be spotted. The tiniest bit of life could be seen here and there, resiliently trying to reclaim and return the space to order. The thick clouds now looked like a fog. It was so dark that I had to turn on the headlights to drive any further. She was right. This was absolutely disgusting and downright horrific to see in person. Barely any sunlight came through, and the little that did had a faint sepia tone.
Soon, my thoughts were interrupted by feelings of sadness. Her sadness had replaced the anger and threatened to puncture a hole in my heart. She needed to get it together. At the very least, I needed to be able to focus on the road. "Thea, please. I understand that you are upset. I can feel it, but unfortunately, I need you to try to rein it in and keep the pain you're feeling to yourself." She didn't respond, opting to continue blinking at the scene outside. "Or at least that side of the car, please." Still no response, but I assumed she heard me. Her anger waned. I wanted to make it to the old Washington line before I woke Granny to take over. I'd been driving for roughly three hours at this point, and I had at least three more to go before I hit that goal. She really needed her rest.
"This area used to be full of glacial formations." She finally spoke. A wistful melancholy reached her voice. "Over there?" I saw her point but was too apprehensive to take my eyes off the road for too long. "Those used to be mountains with formations all along its peaks. Hardly mountains now... simply sad hills..." Her voice trailed off. The miles passed, and she would pick up right where she'd left off. Like a sightseeing tourist, she continued to point and name things along the landscape as we passed by. How things used to be here and there. Flowers, plants, trees, and water. All the same answer for their absence. War. Centuries of it. She didn't need to ask or read my mind about it. It was blatantly obvious.
After a brief reprieve, I could feel her sadness once again trying to creep over and into me. My sad, sorry attempts at blocking it were starting to drain my energy quickly. Obviously, landscape nostalgia was hurting her. I attempted a subject change, hoping it would do the trick, "So what is it like in the in-between for you? You've been here a lot in different bodies, but what about in between? Where do you go?" That question had been eating me for a while, regardless of whether I was currently using it as a distraction tactic. If not heaven or hell, then where? Purgatory? What does that even mean? "And do you get to pick whatever you look like? How does that all work?"
It fell on deaf ears as I felt the sadness continue to grow in intensity. She absently continued, "And that over there? Ridges. That giant cavern just ahead was a large body of natural freshwater filled by the runoff from the glacial formations above. The water was as blue as you can imagine." I felt a hot mist starting to sting my eyes, and a pain in my chest joined in. Her anguish was so palpable that I felt like if I closed my eyes long enough, I could see it in its glory as if I were right there, back in time with her.
The thick brown fog eventually cleared slightly into a more yellow tinge, and the landscape around us grew progressively darker. The gray-brown was littered with patches of lumps that almost looked like charcoal. Remnants of who only knows what. I didn't want to know that answer. The pictures in the textbooks did this horror a gross injustice. Nothing beats the front row in person. Soon, everything around us was scorched. One of the main drop points was dead ahead. A massive crater that looked like a giant punched a hole in the coast, taking out a chunk of the rocky cliff with its retreat. There were only six big drops in the Last War, but that's all that was needed. This one had been hit in five world wars except for the Last War. That's gotta be why home was much nicer. I'm sure the protection efforts of Redding help keep everything south of it relatively decent.
This dead section of Earth stretched out far to the horizon. The ocean levels had risen here as well. It was clear to see by a small road that was only visible when a wave would drift away lazily from the shore. The water was so eerily dark. It was almost as black as the scorched pavement it touched on the newfound shore. The tears that had started forming in my eyes began falling freely. There was no stopping them. Out of the corner of my eye, I swear I saw a few fat ones roll down her perfectly shaped cheek as well, but it was hard to tell through my own obscured vision. Maybe she intended to drown us in so much sorrow that we had no choice but to reciprocate it with our own despair.
That's what this was. Despair. Grief. Longing. Regret. Depression. All flowed through me so powerfully that I felt my fingers dig into the steering wheel. My knuckles turned red as I clenched tighter to try and get a grip on this wave of pain that wasn't mine. This was a level of sadness I only experienced once in my life, and that was the day my grandpa died. My mind immediately took me back to him on that hospital bed. Tubes came from every direction, making him look like some science experiment. I dreaded the inevitable and was frightened of his time to come. I had whispered silently to the gods, hoping and urging that it would be painless, all while knowing that being here was full of pain for him. A calm, quiet death was not waiting, and we all knew it. We were forced to watch him as he slowly drowns inside himself. In his own fluids that kept building, no matter how many times it was drained from his chest cavity. I could feel that anger with the world, and with it, the endlessly slow and agonizing beeping of the machines had returned. Every ragged breath of his came back as if I were in that room with him all over again. I could feel his cold hand as I held it in mine.
The Jeep was gone as I became fully immersed in the memory. "Thea, please." was all I could muster as I was thrust through my reverie. The robust and sterile odor of the medical center's sanitization efforts hit me like a brick, and my nose burned. The room was cold, and I was alone there with him. I whispered to him and told him that it was okay to go. We would be alright once he's gone and his work here was done. "Please... Thea..." I croaked. I felt the pain I had felt five years ago all over again as the beep faded into that foreboding continuous tone. I felt my father's hand on my shoulder like it was all happening again, telling me it was time to let him go. I hugged him, and then I was instantly pulled back into the Jeep next to Thea.
My chest tightened, and the hopelessness started pooling in again, but I was back. I didn't need to ask or wonder why. It's clear why Thea would be upset. The haunting shade of gray surrounding us perfectly reflected the pain in Thea's blank stare. You could hardly see the light break through the thickness of the fog that now surrounded us. What little earth and road could be seen was hardly distinguishable. The two bled together into gray with only slightly darker brown-gray lines, which you could assume only to be road lines.
What have... they... done...
The words were thrust aggressively into my head.
There was a sharp pain at the base of my skull, causing me to crumble in the seat and cradle it with my hands. "Thea... please..." The pain was blinding as it shot straight into my eyes. I could claw them out if I knew it would end the torture. "Thea, STOP!" No response or relief followed. I finally managed to open my eyes. We were facing the coast, off the road, heading straight for the cliff. All I could manage was a guttural scream as I slammed into the brakes, regained control of the steering wheel, and jerked it all the way to the right. The effort was pointless. It was far too late. The wheels skidded and screeched as the car protested the land it slid across. Slowly, it started to tip as we approached. I felt it push past its tipping point at the ledge. With one last ditch effort, I leaned desperately into Thea's space and away from the cliff before we careened off the precipice. The giant black crater in the near distance, mixing with the shoreline, disoriented me further as it violently spun around us.
